ABSTRACT
This selection places the research emphasis on genetic factors as the root cause of Type II diabetes in the context of what Lock calls “geneticization” (selection 28), or the rendering of human nature and morphology as uniform materials emerging directly from the genes. Such an emphasis also resonates with the cultural ideal of autonomous individualism evident in the biomedical focus on individual pathology. McDermott argues that this line of thinking is counterproductive and harmful because it places blame on individual patients and obscures the difference between “causes of cases” and “causes of incidence,” or patterns of disease. Epidemics of diabetes are not limited to populations that are famous for extremely high rates of the disease, as the recent rise in diabetes rates among American and European children shows. Instead, epidemics of obesity and diabetes are the predictable, nearly universal responses of populations undergoing a transition to a Western lifestyle.
